Eugenie C. Scott honored by AAAS

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott, along with nine science teachers who have been on the front lines of the evolution wars, is receiving the American Association for Advancement of Science's 2006 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. A press release from AAAS describes Scott as "tireless in her efforts to offer assistance and information to those trying to stop local and statewide efforts to undermine science education," adding, "She has led workshops, conferences and seminars for teachers and others to explain the well-established scientific basis for evolutionary theory and why 'intelligent design' fails to meet science criteria." Scott will receive the award on February 17, 2007, at the AAAS's annual meeting in San Francisco.

Sharing the award are eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania, who refused to read the disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board: Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor. The constitutionality of the disclaimer and the policy that it implemented was successfully challenged in Kitzmiller v. Dover. Also sharing the award is R. Wesley McCoy, head of the science department at North Cobb High School in Kennesaw, Georgia, who publicly opposed the Cobb County School Board's evolution warning sticker. The sticker was removed after the decision in Selman v. Cobb County; although that decision was vacated, the terms of a settlement reached in lieu of a re-trial ensure that the sticker will not return.

According to the AAAS's press release, "The Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award is presented annually by AAAS to honor individual scientists and engineers or organizations for exemplary actions that help foster scientific freedom and responsibility. The award recognizes outstanding efforts to protect the public's health, safety or welfare; to focus public attention on potential impacts of science and technology; to establish new precedents in carrying out social responsibilities; or to defend the professional freedom of scientists and engineers." Founded in 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal Science.